


Word Of The Day

by scarletmanuka



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Other, Venom's Internet History
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-09-22 02:22:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17051243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarletmanuka/pseuds/scarletmanuka
Summary: Venom doesn't have much to do while Eddie sleeps and so he searches the internet, learning all about Earth. One of the consequences of this is that he develops a broad and extensive vocabulary. Each chapter will focus on a particular obscure or old fashioned word that he has taken a liking to.





	1. Scurryfunge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scurryfunge - (Verb) Old English; to rush around cleaning when company is on their way over.

Eddie hit the Send button on his email, happy that he had finally completed his latest article. It had been a mentally and emotionally exhausting piece about allegations of sexual abuse at a local boy’s home and he had never been so happy to see the end of one of his investigations. He rubbed at his eyes, feeling exhausted but couldn’t help but smile as Venom emerged from his shoulder and nuzzled at his cheek.

**Eddie sad.**

“A little bit, love.”

**Why?**

“It’s always hard when shit like this happens to kids. I never had the best childhood but I never suffered through anything like this though.”

**Will we eat these men?**

“Normally I’d be more than up for that, V – these guys are the scum of the earth, but sometimes you gotta let the justice system do their job so an example is made so other people think twice about doing it.”

**Eating them is an example. They’ll know that if they do it, they become dinner for us.**

Eddie laughed, fondness welling up for his symbiote. “Unfortunately we don’t go around advertising the fact that we eat bad guys. It’s a little hard to be a deterrent if no one knows about the consequences.”

 **Maybe we** **_should_ ** **advertise it?**

“Nah, that’d bring us way too much attention from the authorities. Best to just keep doing what we’re doing.”

**Okay, Eddie.**

He absently scratched the top of Venom’s head, causing the symbiote to let out a low trill of pleasure, and then Eddie stretched his arms above his head, feeling his spine crack a little from where he’d been hunched over his laptop all day. “What should we do for the rest of the afternoon?” he asked. He looked around the apartment, wincing at the mess and then suggested, “Maybe we could go out? Grab some dinner and catch a movie?” If they wanted to stay in for dinner he was going to have to at least tackle the dishes so they had something to eat off of and that was a rather unappealing concept.

 **You’ve forgotten** , Venom said cryptically.

“Forgotten? Forgotten what?”

**Anne and Dan.**

‘Shit!” Eddie exclaimed, leaping to his feet. He had indeed totally forgotten that his ex had invited herself and her fiancé over for dinner tonight. He’d really not wanted to be roped into having them over but Annie had looked at him with such concern in her eyes, professing how worried she was about him and how he couldn’t just hide himself away from the world with only Venom for company. _‘You need human contact as well, Eddie. We’ll bring everything with us so you won’t have to cook, but if we come to you, there’s less likelihood that you’ll worm your way out of it at the last minute.’_

His eyes darted to the clock, confirming that he had less than an hour until they arrived and then they roamed once again over the mess, but saw it in much more detail this time. Practically every dish he owned was stacked up to the side of the sink, and the kitchen table was hidden under piles of mail, old bills, and the toaster that was in several pieces after he had taken it apart last week to try and figure out why it was burning one side of the bread but hardly cooking the other. His sofa only had one cushion visible (where he was currently sitting), the rest was lost under a pile of clean washing that he had dumped there and hadn’t gotten around to folding and putting away yet. The dust bunnies that were gathered in the corners had ceased to be regular sized bunnies and were now Flemish Giants. His mind wandered to the state of his bathroom and he winced just at the thought of Annie walking in there and seeing the scum in the sink that was probably sentient by now.

He had a lot of cleaning to do and not much time to do it in.

He headed for the kitchen first, filling the sink with hot water and popping dishes in to soak while he cleared the table. Venom had sensed his urgency and helped where he could, a tentacle reaching out to gather up loose papers and add them to the pile that Eddie was gathering to hide away in a drawer, and picking up one of the small springs that fell to the floor when he collected up the toaster parts. He brushed a kiss to his symbiote’s cheek in thanks, and Venom trilled once again and through their bond Eddie could feel Venom’s surge of bliss. It made warmth bloom in his chest and even though he was hurrying to get the apartment in some semblance of order before their guests arrives, he basked in the domestic bliss of it all.

Once the table was cleared they tackled the dishes, Eddie washing and then drying the bigger items, and Venom managing to dry the cutlery (only one fork slipped from his tentacle to clatter on the ground). Their hour was almost up - really, he _had_ to start doing the dishes more frequently - and so he decided to just move the mountain of washing ( _‘Hereby named Mount Washington!’_ ; **That was terrible, Eddie** ) to the bed, closing the door behind him and leaving that problem to Future Eddie. With ten minutes to go he quickly scrubbed down the bathroom sink, picked up the dirty washing and shoved it in the basket, and ran the brush around the toilet bowl so Annie would feel safe sitting down.

He had just finished pulling on a fresh shirt when the doorbell rang and he quickly glanced at his reflection to make sure that he wasn’t looking too mussed from his frantic cleaning.

 **You look handsome as usual, Eddie** Venom assured him.

“Thanks, love.” He crossed his apartment, plastered a smile on his face and opened the door to greet Anne and Dan. “Hi there, come on in!”

“Hi Eddie,” Annie said, leaning in to lightly brush a kiss to his cheek as she balanced several dishes of heavenly smelling food. “Hello, Venom.”

**“Hello, Annie, you look lovely as usual.”**

“Oh, stop!” she said, waving away the compliment, a slight blush to her cheeks.

Dan followed her in, a bottle of wine in one hand and he shook Eddie’s hand with his free one. "Hey man, how are you doing?”

“I’m good, thanks, come on in.”

Dan opened the wine and poured out three glasses while Anne deposited the dishes on the table and looked around the apartment, one eyebrow raised. “Wow, Eddie, the place looks great! I’m really impressed.”

“Uh, thanks,” he said as casually as he could, accepting the wine from Dan and hoping that it sounded like he was a responsible functioning adult who always did his chores.

 **“We had a scurryfunge,”** Venom announced proudly.

Dan had been taking a sip from his glass and he choked on the mouthful, spitting it out in all directions. Anne looked scandalised and whispered, “Did we really need to hear that?”

“What? Huh?” Eddie looked between them, his brow furrowed.

“Really, Eddie - there’s a time and a place,” she continued to chastise.

“I have no idea what’s going on,” Eddie admitted. “V, care to shed some light?”

He could feel that the symbiote was just as confused as he was. **“I don’t understand what I said to upset you both,”** he told Anne and Dan. **“I simply said that we had a scurryfunge.”**

“That’s an archaic word for, well, you know, _fucking_ isn’t it?” Dan whispered.

“Wait, it is?” Eddie choked out.

 **“I believe you are confusing it with scrogging,”** Venom told them.

“Oooooh!” said Anne.

**“I thought you had an extensive vocabulary?”**

“Yeah, for _legal_ matters mostly, not old school phrases for sex! How the hell do you know about these words anyway?”

**“There is little to do when Eddie is sleeping. I make good use of the internet.”**

“Oh, God,” Eddie groaned. "Remind me _not_ to look at my browser history.”

“So what’s this scurrying thing then?” Dan asked.

**“Scurryfunge - it means to hastily tidy before having guests over.”**

“Way to give our secret away,” Eddie groused, but he was actually quite relieved. It wasn’t really a secret between them all that Eddie and Venom’s relationship was more than platonic but they’d never openly discussed the _physical_ aspects of it.

To cover her embarrassment, Anne cleared her throat and suggested, “So, how about we eat before it gets cold?”

They gathered around the table and began to dish up their meals, Eddie heaping his plate high to accommodate his increased metabolism thanks to hosting an alien symbiote.

“So,” Dan started, looking to change the topic, “what else have you two been up to, other than work that is? I know you’ve been pretty flat out with that.”

Eddie had just shovelled a forkful of pasta into his mouth, so Venom took the liberty of answering for them. **“We have been scrogging almost daily.”**

Eddie groaned and let his head fall and hit the table. How was this his life now?


	2. Comeuppance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Comeuppance: (noun) a punishment or fate that someone deserves.

“So, they were there when you arrived at the clinic?” Eddie asked the wisp of a girl sitting across the table from him, his notepad open and ready. He still preferred taking handwritten notes when he was interviewing people, finding it more personal and less distracting than typing on his laptop.

“Yeah, there was a pretty big group of them but these three were the most vocal,” Lucy said. She was only young, twenty one at the most and was so petite that the chair almost swallowed her up. She sat with one hand wrapped across her stomach and the other playing with a sugar packet, fiddling nervously. She couldn’t meet Eddie’s eyes, and she spoke quietly, but Venom did something to enhance Eddie’s hearing so that he didn’t have to make her feel uncomfortable by asking her to speak up. The fact that she had even agreed to meet him had been considered a win as it was since most of the people he’d heard about who had gone through the same thing were too scared to come forward. He’d done all he could to make her as comfortable as possible - agreeing to meet at a cafe in a busy mall, keeping her anonymous, agreeing to her terms.

“And they were there again at your second appointment?”

Lucy nodded. “Uh huh, but this time when I left the clinic, they followed me. I didn't realise at first - I’d walked there on my lunch break since it wasn’t going to be a long appointment, just the pre-procedure check up and I was almost back at the office when they cornered me in the alley.” She sniffed and wiped at her eyes, but pressed onwards bravely. “One guy was clearly the leader, he uh, was older, with a white beard, not someone you’d think that you’d have to be wary of if you came across him alone, you know. He had the other two push me up against the wall while he started lecturing me on how I was contemplating murder, that the fetus was God’s creation and that a whore like me didn't get to chose to end its life.”

Eddie felt Venom bristle beneath the surface and under the table where it couldn’t be seen, he rubbed soothingly at his thigh. _Settle, love. No matter how hard it is for us to hear this, we didn't experience it - she did. It was much harder for her._

 **Who do they think they are?** Venom growled. **They need to pay for what they’ve done!**

Despite the horrid circumstances, Eddie couldn’t help but feel fondness flood through him for his symbiote. Venom had gone from someone who had come to Earth with the intent of devouring everything in sight, to feeling protective of the vulnerable and innocent. Eddie tried not to point it out too often since his Other became embarrassed by it, but the fact was, Venom had changed dramatically since they’d first met and it only made Eddie fall further and further in love with him.

“What happened then?” he asked Lucy gently.

“A group of young guys came along, ran them off, and I thought that maybe that would be the end of it, but it wasn’t. Somehow these guys found out where I live and I kept seeing them hanging around. I called the cops but they said that there wasn’t much they could do since they weren’t doing anything and I didn't report what happened in the alley. I phoned the cops again when I was sure that one of these guys was in the house, and they sent a car but they didn't find anyone. When I explained where I’d seen these guys, one of the cops told me that maybe I should reconsider having the abortion, that that might make them stop.” Her face screwed up but she bit her bottom lip hard, like she was trying to stop from crying. “Like what they were doing was _my fault_ ,” she spat. “The cops didn’t take it seriously at all, didn't care that I was being harrassed.”

“Did you have any trouble when you went in for the actual procedure?”

She shook her head. “No, I rang the clinic and asked if they could switch the appointment to another day and when I arrived, there were protesters there, but none of them were the men who had been following me.” She took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “I thought it was over and done with, that they’d lose interest in me once it was done, but I was wrong. They just keep coming, yelling abuse at me, calling me a murderer, leaving cow fetuses on my doorstep, hanging around outside my house.”

“And the cops _still_ aren’t taking you seriously?” Eddie was aghast.

Lucy shook her head. “No, they just keep saying that there’s nothing they can do. I called the clinic in the end, trying to find out what my rights were, and the lady there said that I wasn’t the only one being harrassed, that several other girls were too. She wasn’t allowed to give me their names, but I went back to the clinic, watched the protesters, and it was soon obvious who they were targeting - young girls who didn’t have any support with them, who went alone. I managed to speak to some of the girls, thinking that maybe together we could do something, but they were too scared. The lady at the clinic then told me that she had been in touch with you, that maybe you could investigate.” She finally met his eyes, a timid, hopeful look in them. “Do you think that there’s anything you can do to help?”

**We will tear their heads from their bodies and devour their brains!**

_For crying out loud, V, settle down._ His symbiote had been so loud in Eddie’s head that he was worried that Lucy would hear him. To the girl, he said, “I’m gonna look into this, and I’m sure we can do something, even if it’s just to get the cops to take you seriously.”

They ended up doing more than that - exposing a group of right-wing conservative police officers that were bending the law to suit their own beliefs, and caused a public outcry at their actions. Two of the men who had been harrassing Lucy were caught loitering around her apartment, a cooler full of animal blood with them, and it was proven that they had intent to assault her with it. The older, white bearded man was not with them, and he appeared to have gone underground, avoiding all reaches of the investigation - both Eddie’s and the official police one. Venom was not content to let it lie however and so they dug deeper, pushed further, and discovered that the man was Martin Terrance, and that he was wanted for the murder of three young women in San Diego. Realising that Lucy had had a lucky escape, they continued hunting him and several months later, they finally tracked him down.

It was outside of a different women’s health clinic - a leopard couldn't change his spots after all - and they followed him as he stalked another young woman, very similar to Lucy and his other victims. He cornered her in an alleyway and then they cornered him, Venom enveloping Eddie to grow to his full height, and he plucked the man out of the girl’s face and pinned him to the wall. **“Go!”** Venom told the girl, who was staring in shock. **“He will not bother you again.”** She nodded and ran off and they waited till she was gone before they turned back to the man. He was looking up at them in sheer terror, and the sharp smell of urine perforated their senses as he wet himself. **“Not so righteous now, are you?”** Venom sneered, looking at the man in contempt. **“You seem to lose track of your scruples when you’re not the biggest, nastiest thing around.”**

Terrance seemed to rally at this and he snapped, “She is a murderer! She is destroying one of God’s children!”

 **“Her? A murderer? Oh, but that’s not what a murderer looks like. She is an innocent child.”** Venom smiled widely, showing off even more of his very pointed teeth. **“** ** _This_ ** **is what a murderer looks like.”** His long tongue swept up the man’s face, tasting him.  **"We thought you would find it familiar."**

“Y...y...you’re an a...ab...abomination!” Terrance squealed.

 **“The blood of many is on our hands,”** Venom told him, **“but never fear - we only kill bad people.”** He cocked his head to one said, as if he was considering something. **“In fact, some could argue that we are doing God’s work. What do you think, hmmm? Do you think that your god would be pleased with us?”**

“It is not man’s right to judge in God’s stead!”

**“Is that so? Yet, here you are - judging anyway. It’s rather...hypocritical of you.”**

“I don’t know what you mean!” Terrance cried, trying to twist out of Venom’s grip.

 **“Oh, it’s simple enough. You stalk and harass women who you deem to be murderers simply because they terminate a pregnancy, and then you hunt them down and** **_you murder them_** **. What does your God think of that, Martin?”**

Terrance stared up at the hulking symbiote. “Only God can judge me, abomination.”

 **“Well then, let’s not keep him waiting. This is your comeuppance, Terrance.”** And with one bite, Venom tore his head off.

Eddie pointedly ignored the crunch of bone and the distant taste of flesh on his tongue, never enjoying this part of it all. To distract himself, he thought over Venom’s parting words to their prey. _Comeuppance, V? Is this another of those words that you’ve found on the internet?_

 **Yes,** he replied, sounding pleased with himself. **Humans have many wonderful words that have fallen into disuse. I intend to bring them back.**

_Right, well, what can I say? You’re a trendsetter. How bout we head home, and find something else to eat to get rid of this horrid taste in my mouth?_

**Tots! And chocolate!**

_Why did I have a feeling that you were going to say that? Okay, let's go - while the tots are cooking, you can show me where you've been finding all these cool words._


End file.
